In a late-night vote to avoid a prolonged government shutdown, the Republican Party proved it is a party of hypocrites. Paul Krugman at The New York Times explains how the Republican Party’s hatred of deficits has always been political not policy based:
There have been many “news analysis” pieces asking why Republicans have changed their views on deficit spending. But let’s be serious: Their views haven’t changed at all. They never really cared about debt and deficits; it was a fraud all along. All that has changed is the fact that a Republican now sits in the White House.
How do we know Republicans were never sincere about the deficit? It was obvious, even at the time, to anyone who looked at their fiscal proposals. These proposals always involved giant tax cuts for the wealthy — funny how that worked — offset by savage cuts in social benefits. Even so, assertions that deficits would go down depended entirely on assuming lots of revenue from closing unspecified loopholes and huge savings from cutting unspecified government programs. In other words, even at the peak of their deficit-hawk posturing, all Republicans really had to offer was redistribution from the poor to the rich.
However, pretending to care about the deficit served several useful political purposes. It was a way to push for cuts in social programs. It was also a way to hobble Obama’s presidency.
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Republicans abandon fiscal conservatism by embracing a budget that balloons the deficit and the national debt. https://t.co/Q0PU2HZUDs pic.twitter.com/h0AZLZXDXo
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) February 9, 2018